Will Obama trade Israel for Iran? US President Obama (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (right). Israel talking to world about Iran. Illustrative. (Photo Courtesy of Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
In a bid to reassure American legislators who will have a say in whether or not the US can reach a nuclear deal with Iran, US President Barack Obama has said that he won’t sign a deal he believes is “weak or unenforceable,” and estimated that the odds of a deal are now “less than 50-50” according to a US Senator. Senator Dick Durbin, speaking with POLITICO, said Obama gave the pessimistic perspective during a meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday night. US legislators previously passed a law giving them a chance to nix US support for a deal if it’s unacceptable.
Based on what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said publicly about what deal is being proposed, at this point no deal may be the only way to reach a good deal. “Iran, the leading patron of terrorism in the world, is squeezing more and more concessions from the major powers,” said Netanyahu on Tuesday. “Today, Iran is the greatest threat to world peace.”
Netanyahu, in comments released by his office, again slammed a proposal to alleviate sanctions on Iran and open the door to “hundreds of billions of dollars” of economic benefit for them. Netanyahu asked how such a sum could be given “without this money being conditioned on it not being used to grease the wheels of its ramified terrorist machine?”
While Netanyahu is concerned about sanctions relief for Iran, the Iranians have been pushing for more. On Tuesday, the deputy negotiator for Iran said that they wanted all sanctions removed, including the arms embargo. Seyed Abbas Araqchi was quoted by the Fars News Agency as boasting Iran has developed their own weapons but still saying, “The arms embargoes themselves are not so much important to Iran, but the point is that no sanctions should be kept if there is to be a deal with Iran.”
That certainly wouldn’t be acceptable to Israel, as Netanyahu believes that Iran is worse than ISIS and has plans that go far beyond the Middle East.
Said Netanyahu, “Iran’s increasing aggression is many times more dangerous than that of ISIS, which is dangerous enough, and the true goal of this aggression in the end is to take over the world.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, July 8, 2015)